Hi everyone! My name’s Emory, and I’m the team lead on Core Overload. Yesterday we just had our first “sneak peek” Demo Day. It went fantastically! We had a huge set-up consisting of three 48″ TVs, 6 laptops, and a 24-core desktop server. The event was hosted in USC’s Cinema School, which was a goregeous location. It was also catered with some extremely fancy (pinkies up!) food, though I’m sad to say I didn’t get to eat any of it due to being so busy the whole time. Industry guests from Riot Games, Treyarch, Infinity Ward, Activision, Blizzard, EA, Insomniac, Sony, and Microsoft were some of the many gaming industry professionals who came to check out our stuff. It’s safe to say that they were really impressed with what they saw!
Our set-up with Gameplay Engineer Fotos Frangoudes on the left and Lead Designer Arnold Chow on the right
We got a lot of great feedback and responses from the industry. Just to name a few, the Lead Champion Designer at Riot Games told us that our game was really fun (which is awesome, since we drew a lot of influence from LoL!). The studio head of Treyarch and other employees of IW also had a blast playing Core Overload. We even had some legendary game designers give us tips and suggestions on how to improve the game over the next semester.
Former Naughty Dog & Uncharted lead designer Richard Lemarchand and Dennis Wixon, Halo User Research Manager, talk to us about things we could improve on for UI and visual feedback
We laid out our artist postcards on a cocktail table next to our booth. They were getting snatched up like candy! People wanted to collect the whole set and were really impressed by the artwork. We started out the day with over 600 cards total, and now I’ve only got around 100 left!
Our artist postcards! I didn’t manage to get a pic of them out at the event since people kept crowding around the table they were on trying to get them
Of course, none of this would’ve been possible without our awesome team of engineers, artists, designers, and audio guys! Here’s a couple of pictures to round things out.
Some of the leads chilling with Infinity Ward and Activision (Paul Bellezza from Riot can be seen in the background talking with our engineers)
David Heidhoff and Lisa Clark, two of our 2D concept artists, came all the way from LCAD to see us!
One last picture of our set-up! Joseph Goldberg, one of our designers, can be seen wearing our fashionable Core Overload hoodie
It was a fantastic Demo Day! We’re excited to see everyone in May for our final show!